Some striking revelations from Congressman Henry Waxman. chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

In this letter to the US Department of Defense's Inspector General, Waxman accuses the authorities of seriously under-estimating the amount fraud and improper use of funds in Iraq. Based on its sample, he says the department had put it at $35 million. That's way under, according to Waxman.

"Your report did not estimate the extent of potentially criminal transactions outside of the sample you examined," Waxman writes. "My staff, however, has done this extrapolation. Among the transactions you examined, approximately 4% resulted in criminal referrals.

"When this percentage is applied to the entire pool of 180,000 transactions, it appears that there may be more than 7,000 potential criminal cases involving more than $190 million in federal spending that have not been identified. This is an astounding amount of potential criminal fraud."